A few days back, Terry Branstad became America’s longest serving governor. But that certainly does not imply that he has in any way been the most consequential governor in America nor in Iowa. What it does say is that the vaunted, highly educated Iowa electorate tends to reelect candidates no matter what they do, especially if they are Republican.

Branstad’s recent terms have been exercises in taking our tax money and handing it over to his donors. Nothing could be more illustrative of this than the fiasco his administration has created in his haste to reward corporate donors from the insurance world with lucrative no-bid contracts to run Iowa’s Medicaid system. But here are many other examples from Orascom to his administrations ‘reinterpretation’ of tax laws to greatly benefit businesses.

Progress Iowa has created a website to keep track of Branstad’s broken promises. We can fully expect the millions of dollars in savings that Branstad promised that profitizing Medicaid would create will be on that list next year.

In a press release announcing their new website to track Branstad’s record of broken promises Matt Sinovic stated:

“Unfortunately, simply serving in office longer than any other governor in our country’s history is by far the most notable achievement of this governor’s administration,” said Matt Sinovic, Progress Iowa Executive Director. “They failed to keep a number of promises, from failing to create jobs to letting Iowa fall behind the rest of the country when it comes to supporting our students. They’ve done a good job staying in office, but a poor job serving their constituents.”

Weekly Action Item

Stop Trump TV. Go to freepress.net, sign up for emails and complete the contact form to the FCC opposing the Sinclair-Tribune merger. Freepress has filed a Petition to Deny the merger with the FCC. You can still send a comment directly to the FCC. You can see the filing here.